Dead Pool 3rd November 2013

What a week! Without Lou Reed I’d have struggled to recognise a single ‘celebrity’ death! Sure I know their faces once I looked them up, but seriously! With less than two months to go for this years pool, things are moving too slowly. I think we need to send out the flying monkeys so we can start scoring again, failing that we all better start praying to Satan for some divine intervention.

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Nigel Davenport, 85, English actor (Chariots of Fire, Howards’ Way).
• Lou Reed, 71, American rock musician (The Velvet Underground) and songwriter (“Walk on the Wild Side“), liver disease.
• Graham Stark, 91, English comedian and actor (The Pink Panther, Superman III, Alfie), stroke.
• Paul Dennis Reid, 55, American convicted murderer.

In Other News

David Beckham has been involved in a car accident which saw his $76k Range Rover hit by another vehicle near his Beverly Hills home. The former England captain was behind the wheel and accompanied by his 14-year-old son Brooklyn when the collision happened. According to reports, the 38-year-old pulled out of his driveway and was hit by an oncoming car driven by a woman. Beckham and his son were sadly unharmed, but this is the second time both have been involved in a crash. In 2011, the two had a “lucky escape” when their vehicle was involved in a pile-up on one of the busiest roads in Los Angeles. Maybe next time…

You may have missed the fact that DJ Paul Gambaccini has been arrested as part of Operation Yewtree. The latest DJ from the Savile camp is now under lock and key and the BBC have pulled his Saturday night show from the radio, which is a great shame because the replacement show was utter tripe! Time will tell if he’s guilty or not, maybe he’ll take the same route as Savile’s former driver and kill himself, so perhaps Gambo is a good shout for next year!

Tranmere midfielder Joe Thompson has been diagnosed with cancer. The 24-year-old has not played for Rovers since September due to feeling ill and medical tests have since found the former Rochdale winger has contracted nodular sclerosing Hodgkin’s disease. Thompson will now undergo a six-month course of chemotherapy. I’m sure we all wish him well during his treatment, but just in case, I expect to see his name on a few lists in a couple of months time.

On This Day

• 1783 – John Austin, a highwayman, is the last person to be publicly hanged at London‘s Tyburn gallows.
• 1918 – Poland declares its independence from Russia.
• 1954 – The first Godzilla film is released and marks the first appearance of the character of the same name.
• 1957 – Sputnik program: The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 2. On board is the first animal to enter orbit, a dog named Laika.
• 1976 – Sissy Spacek creeps out audiences in the horror movie Carrie.
• 1978 – The family sitcom Diff’rent Strokes premieres on NBC in 1978.

Deaths

• 1926 – Annie Oakley, American target shooter.
• 1954 – Henri Matisse, French painter and sculptor.
• 1957 – Laika, Soviet dog. I never said she made it back…
• 1998 – Bob Kane, American writer and illustrator.
• 2002 – Lonnie Donegan, Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist

Thank Fuck He’s Dead by Stu

This week’s TFHD is Euronymous. Ok, so he wasn’t really called Euronymous; Øystein Aarseth was the founder of Norwegian black metal band Mayhem, and originally went by the pseudonym “Destructor” before he renamed himself after the little-known Greek flesh-eating demon of the underworld, Euronymos. Seriously, I’m not making this up.

What sets Aarseth apart from previous entries in this column is that he (probably) didn’t kill anybody. However, this guy was pretty fucked up. A self-confessed satanist, he participated in the 1992 burning of Holmenkollen chapel but his stand-out what the fuck moment came two years earlier, when the lead singer of Mayhem, Per “Dead” Ohlin committed suicide at the house the two shared.

Now if you came home to find your roommate had just blown his brains out all over the walls and floor, you probably wouldn’t react the same way Aarseth did – he phoned bassist Necrobutcher (yes, Necrobutcher) and told him “Dead has done something really cool! He’s killed himself!” In a whirlwind of commercial brilliance he reassured Necrobutcher; “Relax, I have photos of everything!”

Aarseth posed the body of his friend, careful to make sure he arranged the shotgun, bloody knife and brain tastefully, and took photos – one of which was used as an album cover for a bootleg release, Dawn of the Black Hearts (check it out, it’s all over the internet.) It was rumoured that he made a stew out of bits of Dead’s brain, and made necklaces for other “worthy” musicians from fragments of skull. The band later denied the first rumour – but confirmed the second.

He was stabbed to death in 1993 by fellow metaller Count Grishnack (not his real name) in an attack that some speculate was to out-do a previous murder Grishnack had committed, though he claimed that Euronymous had planned to tie him up, electrocute him, and torture him to death on video. The whole story will probably never be known, but the fact remains that Øystein Aarseth was absolutely bat-shit crazy, and to put it bluntly, a bit of a dick.

In March 2012 a Norwegian airline held a public vote to pick a famous Norwegian whose picture would adorn the aircraft. Aarseth was leading the poll but his name was removed from the campaign after his family’s request.

Last Week’s Birthdays

Winona Rider (42), Joaquin Phoenix (39), Toni Collette (41), Jenny McCarthy (41), Julia Roberts (46), Richard Dreyfuss (66), Kelly Osbourne (29), Henry Winkler (68), Matt Smith (31), Charlie Daniels (77), David Shwimmer (47), Bill Gates (58), Simon Le Bon (55), Matthew Morrison (35), Anthony Kiedis (51), John Cleese (74), Vanilla Ice (46), Lyle Lovett (56), Dennis Franz (69), Nelly (39), Peter Jackson (52), Diego Maradona (53) and K.D. Lang (52).

2013 League Table

[confidential]

Next Week peeps!